5-2
Wisconsin’s expanded majority on the state supreme court was hard fought and well earned. Here’s what you need to know.
I believe in celebrating the wins. Wisconsinites got a big win this week when former Assemblywoman and Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor easily won her race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, expanding the court’s liberal majority to 5-2.
Liberal judges have won the last 4 statewide elections for these seats, and as The DownBallot points out, things “could get even worse for conservatives if they lose next year’s race to replace Justice Annette Ziegler, another conservative who has announced that she will not run again. If liberals score another pickup in April of 2027, the soonest that conservatives, who were in the majority from 2008 until 2023, could win back control would be 2033.” That’s huge.
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Politically active people often follow Wisconsin Supreme Court races closely, even if they have no history or association with the state. Court races were nationalized because millions of dollars in special-interest spending from the right poured into them, and everyone from local billionaire Diane Hendricks to Elon Musk has contributed. In 2011, when Scott Walker turned Wisconsin into a “laboratory for oligarchs,” all politics in Wisconsin instantly became international news, including the 2011 state supreme court race, where the majority flipped from liberal to conservative, further empowering Walker.
Scott Walker and his cronies used now having the majority to their advantage, decimating public programs and services and reengineering the political and academic culture of the state. Including an aggressive redistricting bill that enshrined Republican majorities in the State House and Senate. Laboratory for oligarchs is an apt phrase because I absolutely believe that Walker’s actions in Wisconsin were a direct inspiration for Project 2025, and a signal to billionaires everywhere that the American Right was more than happy to put America up for sale whenever and wherever they came to power.
Wisconsin is one of a handful of cautionary tales in the states that Americans didn’t pay close enough attention to. The good news is that we can learn from Wisconsin’s victories. In addition to winning and expanding the majority on the state supreme court, there was the election of Governor Tony Evers in 2019, which reduced the Republican majority in the Wisconsin State Assembly and broke the Republican hold on the supermajority in the State Senate. The Wisconsin Democratic Party has become an organizing and fundraising juggernaut, largely due to Ben Wikler’s tenure as State Party Chair.
I lived and worked in Wisconsin from 2008-11, experiencing Walker and the Tea Party Republicans’ win firsthand. Over the years, I’ve seen my former colleagues run for and hold elected office, volunteers deepen their involvement rather than disengage, former interns now running organizations, and local bloggers doing all of the above, with some still writing about politics regularly. Many of these folks are still close friends, and I know fighting the good fight against what seemed like an insurmountable foe could be heartbreaking. But they kept at it.
It’s much easier to destroy things than to build them. Something that MAGA Republicans exploit as they dismantle America piece by piece. But that doesn’t mean their victory is inevitable. Even when it might feel that way.
Nationally, Tuesday’s election results in Wisconsin and the special election in Georgia bode well for this year’s midterm elections. Winning big in November would give us more power to curb the Trump Regime’s continual power grab. We have to ensure the election is free and fair, and then we have to vote MAGA out of every office we can. We have the momentum. We can win this.